Adding a free Let's Encrypt certificate

Overview

This article explains how to add a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate to your domain.

Every domain must have its own separate certificate. This means that if you want an SSL cert for example.com and blog.example.com, you must add them separately.

Before adding the certificate

Before you begin to add the certificate, make sure the DNS of your domain is already pointing to DreamHost. This means that either your Nameservers should be pointed to DreamHost, or your A records (www and non-www record) should be pointed to your domain's IP address (assuming your Nameservers are at a different company).

This is because 'Let's Encrypt' adds a .well_known/ folder to your site to authenticate the certificate. If your site's DNS is not resolving to DreamHost, the certificate cannot create this folder to authenticate and your panel will display the following:

htaccess rules

Additionally, certain .htaccess rules such as IP blocking, rewrite rules, and password protection may cause the installation to fail. To play it safe, rename your .htaccess file (to something like .htaccess_OFF) in order to turn it off temporarily. Then, install the certificate. Once installed, you can rename the file back to .htaccess.

If disabling your .htaccess breaks your site, then add the following rule which should allow the installation to process:

Adding the certificate

Click the Add button to the right of the domain you wish to add the SSL cert.

On the next page click the 'Select this Certificate' button.

A Success message displays confirming the purchased certificate

Test if the SSL certificate is working

The certificate is now installed on your domain. Visit the secure URL of your website at:

https://example.com

You can see the browser bar shows a lock icon confirming the connection is secure.

If you just installed the certificate, you may need to wait a few hours for it to update online.

Forcing your site to load HTTPS be default

Even after you have added the SSL certificate to your site, visitors will not be able to use it unless they manually type in 'https' before your domain name. This defeats the purpose of adding it in the first place since the certificate is meant to protect all of your website traffic.

There are several ways to fix this. View the following article for instructions on how to create a configuration file to redirect all visitor traffic to the secure version of your URL (https).

Redirecting to the HTTPS version of your URL only works for the same domain. This means that you can only redirect from http://example.com to https://example.com.

It is NOT possible to redirect to a different domain. For example: http://example1.com to https://example2.com would not function with a 'Let's Encrypt' certificate.

Troubleshooting

After installing your certificate, you may find that your browser is still showing an insecure warning when visiting the HTTPS version of your URL. There are a few reasons this could occur. Please view the following article for instructions on how to resolve this issue.